Cloud computing is the buzzword of the moment . It seems that applying the "cloud" label is a real desire for a lot of people out there in the marketplace. This of course leads to the arguments about whether the "cloud" label is appropriate or just marketing spin. Why on earth is Cloud Computing so appealing? I think there are a lot of factors. I'll outline a few of the main ones below … Trendy To a certain extent delivering a cloud solution suggests that organisations are on the cutting edge of ......

The Open Group has recently released a draft version of a SOA ontology. The Open Group has always had a mandate to help boundaryless information flow and the ontology (specification of conceptualisation) for SOA is a demonstration of just that. The ontology is written in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) defined by the World-Wide Web Consortium and this for me is what makes it a hurdle to learn as it's not an intuitive meta-language but then is any? Perhaps if it wasn't for the graphical tools we would ......

Bless Grady Booch! Love him or hate him you can't keep him down! Just only a few weeks after open heart surgery he has posted another classic! This time Grady has decided to take a few pot-shots at SOA picking fairly and squarely on the hype. Well to be honest Grady, IBM doesn't actually get away scott-free when it comes to SOA marketing hype, the 'middleware' campaign over the summer springs to mind. Anyway, I for once pretty much agree with him on this one, infact I touched on this a few months ......

Many of us did it, made one New Year Resolutions to many at the Millennium and didn’t managed to succeed in any of them. I tried to give up smoking, losing a bit of weight, drinking less beer, save up to buy a house and learning to drive. A lot of change there, to much infact, so unsurprisingly I failed. A common story. 8 years later, all those things on the list are (more or less) achieved and how I did that was by concentrating on fixing one thing at a time. Again unsurprisingly, psychologists ......

Analysts, vendors and end users alike appear united in their enthusiasm for SOA. Recently the Butler Group tells us that only 3% of organisations have rejected SOA. In a recent survey by systems integrator Griffiths Waite found that 2008 is a critical year for SOA implementation, with 15% of organisations already running SOA but a much larger 38% progressing towards it. Of the 47% still “contemplating” it, Giffiths Waite says “evidence suggests these will [start to] move into strategising and planning”. ......

Recently, I was involved in a SOA review for an organisation (obviously, I do not wish to name names) It was pretty clear that they hadn’t actually adhered to many of the key SOA Design Principles that are, Standardized Service Contracts Service Loose Coupling Service Abstraction Service Reusability Service Autonomy Service Statelessness Service Discoverability Service Composability Service-Orientation and Interoperability Much of the SOA was built using a single vendors technologies many corners ......

Oslo is the codename for technical thinking aimed specifically at simplifying designing, building, managing and scaling of service-oriented and composite applications that can span from the enterprise to the Internet. It is thought the first version of Oslo will be delivered through the next versions of our application platform products such as Microsoft Visual Studio 10, Microsoft System Center 5, BizTalk Server 6, BizTalk Services 1 and Microsoft .NET Framework 4. So, we are talking a 18 months ......

Microsoft have release a really cool tool for downloading and reading the Architecture Journal magazine offline. The new reader is a locally installed application that enables you to read every issue of the Journal into a searchable and easy-to-read form. The application synchronizes with our content management services so that you'll automatically have access to the latest Journal issues without needing to download PDF files or checking online. Please note the tool is still in Beta so there is bound ......

Selling the theory for SOA is pretty easy, the execution is harder because technically it isn't actually a very simple thing to do, let alone the changing of the structure of your IT organisation to house-keep. The book SOA Approach to Integration is aimed fairly and squarely at the Architect and Senior Developer who has the job of designing and implementing SOA technical level. The book is very resolute in keeping a strong focus on the technology and pleasantly realises that successful integration ......

Zapthink's recent article on Who's Killing SOA? hit the nail on the head to the reasons why SOA is not succeeding! However, reading the article I think that Zapthink has missed the two main reasons why SOA is currently not succeeding. 1) Education - I believe that people in Business & IT are not completely clued up on what SOA is in enough detail to implement it. 2) United Vision - People in Business and IT do not have a united vision of what SOA is and do not have a complete enough understanding ......

I have been watching the channel 9 video on Biztalk.Net Services. I have to say I’m pretty excited about this project and the reason why will become apparent later on in this post. BizTalk.NET Services ( http://labs.biztalk.net ) is an experimental project (it’s at CTP currently) that extends WCF and is all about generic, secure connectivity. It’s a free download so fill your boots! The project has come about from the result of customer feedback where many have asked “how do I notify client applications ......

I spoke recently about Astoria as a possible answer to the snowballing standards of the WS-I. Anyway, I decided to look into this a bit more and I found this perfect article written by Michele Leroux Bustamante of IDesign, entitled "Making sence of all those Crazy Web Service Standards" that will happily explain the new standards with handy diagrams and bite-sized explanations ......

No I haven't been in hiding but as the proverb says 'there is no rest for the wicked', so I must have been very bad. Anyway, I have a new house which has meant tarting up the old one and work has been ultra hectic but our websites for a well known travel brand are going live one at a time. Anyway, I hoping from a nice summer to get stuck into some good tech. Microsoft has also been busy, it is becoming crystal clears days where Redmond is heading with Service Oriented Architecture. For example John ......

One of the key parts of a SOA’s is the Business Process Logic Layer. One of the key technologies in this layer is Windows Workflow Foundation, one the key things that was missing from WF was support for BPEL so this called into question Microsoft commitment to the XML standard. Anyway, I’m happy to report that BPEL for Windows Workflow Foundation March CTP is available able from MSDN Download. With this add-on you will be able to import and export BPEL from WF. Remember it is still in CTP so is officially ......

Is EDA or Event Driven Architecture set to supercede SOA ? Well John Bates, VP of Apama Products and researcher at Cambridge University has stuck his neck out and said yes in a recent interview with SearchWebServices Rich Seeley. Ok, so what is EDA firstly ? Well Wikipedia definition says, " Event Driven Architecture (EDA) is a software architecture pattern promoting the production, detection, consumption of and reaction to events. An event can be defined as "a significant change in state"[1]. For ......

For sometime now I have been working on a few papers on the subject of SOA. This is the first, my definitive definition of what is SOA Governance. 'SOA Governance' is perhaps the hotest of topics in the SOA world currently but it seems that almost everyone with an opinion has a different definition of what it is and how to do it. I have attempted with this post to distill these definitions into one document which you can take away and use as part of a policy statement to help you with your SOA's ......

There are common analogies used in I.T. and in Architecture there is a rather popular one and that is drawing a comparison between building applications and constructing Lego models.ZapThink have written an interesting article that explores whether this is actually a wise thing to do specifically in the context of service orientation ......

Pete Lacey in his post here has raised some very good points that are worth discussing.For my take I think we are stuck between a rock and a hard place, we need an interoperability standard that does all the good stuff like security and transactions, but simple? I know that technologies like Microsoft's WCF has gone along way to abstract the developer away from the fun to be had at the WS-* level but is this the right answer ? And I am still hearing story's that Java et al can't access Web Services ......

UPDATE : Now Microsoft have fixed this issue I pointed out from the orginal post, you will now be safely redirected to http://www.microsoft.com/bi... ... nice one Microsoft and thanks for listening! http://www.ibm.com/soahttp:... http://www.sun.com/soa http://www.oracle.com/soaand now try ... http://www.microsoft.com/soa Not even a redirect! ... A big trick missed here. This is just another demonstration of how the product teams and tech guys are building ......

All, This is a fantastic paper from ARM Research that sums-up the current state of play in the SOA market with IBM and Microsoft here. I am constantly frustrated why Microsoft doesn't shout from the roof-tops that it has a compelling SOA solutions. I believe Microsoft infact has the most complete end-to-end tool-set for SOA. The article states that the reason is "Microsoft believes that eventual backlash to all the hype around SOA shifts focus away from the real benefits that SOA can bring, so it ......

At this moment in time I am really getting into the challenges of our SOA implementation. It is clear that we are not going to be able to achieve all we would like to in this phase of the project as there are more important things to get done in the times scales. The Data Search Façade One of the elements of the project is that two important pieces of data reside in multiple systems. What the existing legacy application does is to search each of these system in turn until it finds a match, then ......

I’ve been catching up on my news since coming back from holidays and I found this little gem. Microsoft has made a rather low-key statement which it has entitling the OSP or Open Specification Promise, basically what the statement says is that Microsoft will not pursue you for legal recompense for patent infringement for many of their core web services technologies. This for me and anyone involved in the SOA world is a big deal. This is fantastic news for SOA as it basically means that Microsoft ......

It is a logical, reasonable and best practice stance to examine getting the most out of assets that are already at your disposal especially if there is an emphasis of reduce costs which is one of the driving factors for selecting SOA in the first place. With SOA one of the most emotive technical issues to tackle is where to host the ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) as there is an attraction to examining hosting the ESB on existing hardware, a mainframe would seem an obvious choice. In this post I will ......

In this post I will be taking a high level look at what a possible SOA implementation architecture scenario and what it might look like giving an indication of what technologies are involved. This example scenario is a SOA implementation for call-centres using Microsoft Technologies, some you may have heard of, and others that are sadly as yet unsung. A few things to note, I haven’t come across a medium to large organisation that doesn’t use Citrix for the UI deployment so this is why ......

In the next two posts we are going to discuss SOA which as you may know if you read this blog regularly is a pet subject of mine. I’ve encounter many a good person that is fully aware of SOA and its much hyped benefits but this doesn’t help them visualise it, hence these posts which are for you good people. The logical model is my interpretation of SOA, it may not be everyone’s interpretation, so if it’s not I would love to hear from you. The SOA logical model has 6 layers, Existing Systems, Data ......

I don’t usually like to be blunt as a general rules these days as you can imagine that a whack over the head can often offend but in the case of SOA 2.0 I’m willing to let this rule slide. Oracle and Gartner are starting to talk about a term called SOA 2.0. In a nutshell SOA 2.0 is SOA + EDA or Event Driven Architecture. The natural progression of service is towards an event driven model but this does not necessarily mean that this is an upgrade to SOA. EDA can happily fit inside SOA ......

... was the conclusion of a recent IDC Research survey, entitled 'FROM PILOT TO PAYOFF: SERVICE-ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE HITS ITS STRIDE' which can be found here.Top Survey Insights• Between 2005 and 2006, SOA adoption accelerated – with increases in pilot program, departmental, and enterprise-wide deployments.• SOA spending increased, while funding for traditional architectures dropped.• SOA momentum will continue to build, as most companies consider SOA a critical short- and ......

Someone (they didn't leave a name) recently suggested I should stay off the coffee before I start talking about SOA, hence the picture (thanks consumerist.com for the use of), fellow GWB'er Chris Williams also suggested I should get things off my chest, so here goes. I’m sick of SOA and the state of affairs it’s in now. SOA is suffering from a very major credibility issue that threatens to kill off the term and therefore I fear the ideal. Ironically, the cause of the problem is the very ......

Two days running! I’m blown away again! Today it was the turn of Neon and their product called Shadow RTE and how they have simply cracked the problem of getting the IBM mainframe to become a full partner in the Service Orientated world. The scary bit being that not many mainframe guys are going to do much complaining with this technology and it may work well enough that you may even rethink your plans to migrate away from the wee blue beastie!!! Put very simply Shadow RTE is a range of tools ......

IBM have followed Microsoft's lead and created a section dedicated to Architecture on their DeveloperWorks site which can be found here. The resources has a lot of content already but it all seems to be around the architectural subjects that IBM want to push such as SOA and model driven development, instead of a broader range of content aimed at all the disciplines that Architecture covers but I'm sure this will grow with time. Anyway, if you are an Architect it is certainly worth signing up to the ......

IBM is concentrating very hard on SOA right with links right from the http://www.ibm.com front-page, which is more than Microsoft. They are investing $1 billion a year into SOA based technologies. They also claim to have over 1000 "SOA customer engagements all over the world". Now to earth with a bump, did IBM spend a lot of money on development of SOA or marketing because this website has been over done by marketing and really has very little content, there is nothing new here that I can't find ......

And now to my other project that is close to my heart at the moment which is SOA. As you may recall, we were having difficulty in selling the idea of SOA in our business, this has now changed. We have a project and a business sponsor. So in this post I want to reflect on some of the tips I’ve picked up so far that I would like to share with you. Now this is list isn’t completely comprehensive, I’m bound to have miss something out, but hey, something to talk about in future posts. ......

Lets talk more about SOA ... I have been reading allot on SOA recently whilst I've been getting my thoughts more in order since previous posts that have been admittedly hap-hazard. Rather a lot of pundits on blogs or in the media have pondered numerous questions and made many predictions, I’ve even read a lot on Geeks with Blogs! Will 2005 be the year for service oriented architecture (SOA)? What is this technology? Is it new? Has it really been around for along time? Will SOA be most talked ......